A woman pleaded guilty in December to fatally beating a child after he took a cupcake from her kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia.
On October 21, 2017, LaShirley Morris beat the three-year-old boy, Kejuan Mason, with a baseball bat as punishment for eating the cupcake, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The report continued:
A child inside the home witnessed the attack, according to a Division of Family and Children Services report. Her sister, Glenndria Morris, was also charged in Mason’s death because she did not intervene during the fatal beating. Her case is still pending, the Fulton DA’s office said.
Kejuan lived with Glenndria Morris, who was also his legal guardian at the time of the alleged killing.
“Police were later called to the ‘roach-infested’ home in southwest Atlanta after a 911 call that said he wasn’t breathing. Paramedics arrived and performed CPR, but the child died at the hospital,” according to 11 Alive.
Following the incident, the two sisters reportedly claimed the boy had choked on the cupcake, resulting in his death.
However, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said Kejuan had bruises all over his body and that he died of blunt force trauma.
“A copy of LaShirley Morris’ final disposition says she pleaded guilty to murder, two felony murder counts, aggravated assault, cruelty to children in the first degree and cruelty to children in the third degree,” the report stated.
At a 2018 bond hearing, Kejuan’s grandmother, Xavier Upshaw, said the suspect told her the child had been beaten, according to the New York Post.
“I have five grandbabies. I had six. It is unfair. He was 3 years old. What can a baby do, 3 years old, to make you beat him to death?” Upshaw commented.
Following Morris’s guilty plea in December, she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.